The Things We Do
by bestia
Summary: In retrospect, everything is always clear. Aladdin takes the time to reflect on his mother and her actions. Who really determines the nature of sacrifice?


The Things We Do

He remembered the names they called her, his mother. He remembered because as hard as his will to overcome the sadness battled to forget, he would _always _remember. Singing insults into what should be simple childhood memories, voices would resurface. The children who stung him and his family with their insults were most likely dead while Aladdin lived, victims of poverty and chance, or were grown and living their own lives. He doubted they remembered him, or their casual torture of his esteem. But they would live forever as children in his mind, as long as he could still remember the names they called her, his mother.

"Your mother's a whore!"

"That's not true!"

When he was younger, he didn't understand. His mother was a miracle: beautiful, gentle, and kind. She was the single most important person in his life. She knew him better than anyone else. His mother was the always loyal and faithful who truly believed one day Aladdin would grow up big and strong, even when he did not. She was his ally because she loved him, and she told him so every night when he was young as she put him to bed with a kiss on the cheek. "You're special," she'd never forget to remind him.

He was her little man. He'd help carry in baskets of the fruit and bread, he'd help to clean what little their was to clean, and he'd offer what hugs he could if she looked sad staring out the doorway night after night, looking always for their father. She'd say to him, "Aladdin, you're my everything. There are such great things for you. You are as precious and rare as a gem in the sand."

When he would come home crying if the wealthy children told him he wasn't good enough to play with them because of his bare feet and clothes cut to fit him year after year, she would say fiercely as she wiped his tears, "They are jealous of you, darling. They fear how bright you shine, do not let them convince you to hide in dirt as they do."

But his mother could not protect him from what lay outside their door forever, she had to know that. She had to know he would start to gradually question in his mind her curious work hours, her leaving late at night in thin dresses, returning in the morning, tired, but baring money or food. She had to know he would have no way to answer, "What does your mother do?" She had to know that the older neighbor children grew, the more mercilessly insightful they would become.

"I saw your mother with my father, _Aladdin. _He gave your family money."

He would feel shame because he somehow understood he should, but not quite _why _he should. Was there something wrong in his mother's smiles and friendliness to vendors if Aladdin stole along to watch her shop? Was it not all right that the guards knew his mother by name, and called to her enthusiastically across the street? Was it somehow the reason the other mothers in his neighborhood never once invited his mother over, and talked about her only when her back was turned?

Curiosity simmered as he grew. He searched his mother's things; she put on the cheap, salvaged makeup to feel pretty, and nothing more, he told himself. He _tried _not to stay up late at night; swinging his feet on his bed, wondering just what time did his mother get off of work exactly? He looked into her face over and over again, finding love pouring in wealth, but also seeing hollowness, weariness, and a determination, the same look he saw in her eyes as she haggled as normally only the fathers would do for more food in exchange for her money at the market.

Aladdin's mother was slender, tall, and sturdy. Her eyes were dark and strong in her face, large and emotive, her lips a self-possessed curve, her skin smooth, caramel and soft when she brought Aladdin to her in embrace, and her hair danced around her as water does when she moved in a black curtain. His mother was beautiful, but it did stop the names.

"Face it, Aladdin, your mother's a whore. Don't you understand?"

His first instinct was violence, a fist to other child's mouth, and an upset, "You take that back!" But he was only one child, one hungry, confused, fatherless child who wandered the streets while his mother was sleeping before her 'job' at night, and the children were greater in number and confidence. His stubborn resolution to defend his mother, even in the face of truth, kept him beaten, kept him bruised, kept him in constant fights and black eyes. But even as he was ground into dirt, he could listen…

"My mother says your mother should be ashamed of herself, leading all those good men to sin."

"I've seen your mom, Aladdin, sneaking in and out of houses. My uncle sees her every week."

"You know what that makes you, right? A _son of a whore, _and a street rat besides."

"Your mom was at our house again last night. Did she even come home?"

"A _son of a whore_."

Soon he fought only out of habit, not because he did not believe, because he did believe. Soon he did not come home, even knowing his mother was waiting. He fought hunger and pride as he stared at the food she placed before him, glaring up with his father's eyes from beneath his bangs his mother reminded herself she needed to cut. So this was how they lived, eating the food earned _that _way He remembered a long time ago going hungry even more often than he did now. How long was it after his father left did his mother began to sell her beauty to the world? To not eat was to feel pain; to eat the food bought with the money of a _whore _was unbearable.

Older and bolder he grew, even while his mother strained to keep up the lie. Naturally, the day would come to confront her, and naturally she would be infuriatingly patient and understanding with Aladdin as he shoved his food onto her plate.

"I'll find some myself."

When youthful righteousness would fail, he begged and pleaded with her, unwilling to believe her logic that no employer in Agrabah would take her in as a single mother, believed to be abandoned by her husband. She was an outcast; they both were. This was all she could do to keep food on the table. And she tried so hard. She didn't want him to know, after all. But things will get better, "These are just the things we do when we can do nothing else. But when your father returns home…"

"Dad isn't coming back, Mom, and you know it!"

Disaster had to happen in a house so full of misunderstanding. While he roamed further and further from home, his mother lost herself in work, always believing she was doing the right thing for her son. Her paying suitors became bolder. As Aladdin was sneaking in from a night of wandering the streets, he saw his mother, trapped between a heavy-smelling body and the front door.

The argument they had would be their last, so preoccupied Aladdin would become in trying to fight the sickness he discovered was plaguing his mother. His mother was sick, without explanation or restraint, without reason or justice. Everything was forgotten in tending to her, bathing her brow, keeping her at her bed, feeding her, bathing her, nursing her as best he could, thinking, 'I cannot loose my mother.'

In panic, Aladdin discovered not a cent could be scrapped up to buy better medicine, or even, luxuriously, a doctor, even when he went without food or sleep, planted at his mother's side. Relenting he could not do it alone, he even pleaded with their neighbors, "Please, my mother is very sick. She needs help, _we _need help." He was not completely surprised by the doors slammed in his face; after all, he was a _son of a whore. _

Nights bled into one another spent counting his mothers breaths in the stiff, sick air of her little bedroom. He pushed her beautiful, if not thin hair from her face; he wet her lips with a rag, and pressed food at her that he had begun sneaking from the neighbors. He lived and died with every flash of recognition in his mother's eyes as she looked at her son battling to keep her alive while her body withered. He pleaded in tears, head bowed on her stomach,

"Mom, please tell me how to help you. I don't know what to do. Don't leave me please; let me save you, please. You can't leave me, you can't."

Only when Aladdin's mother died, did those in important places notice. Only when neighbors decided to check on him, did they take an interest in his life. Early one morning, they broke into the home, repelled by the smell of sickness, but determined to pry Aladdin's hand from his mother's as they took her body away. In knowing circles, they decided his future for him. With all the good intentions in the world, they _meant _to put Aladdin in an orphanage, but after a while, it simply became a matter of wasted time and effort searching for the boy when he ran away.

-0

Aladdin had a talent for stealing. He had a talent for stealth, for quick fingers, for speed and tactics and agility, and could clean a clumsy market traveler of his purse faster than any pickpocket in Agrabah by age fourteen. He knew he could never live in an orphanage; children his age were sent to work camps, or apprenticed out. He instead lived in little nooks and crannies away from the noise, in abandoned buildings and forgotten rooms, and that suited him just fine. After all, he could look out for himself. Who else was going to? Above all else, he would not let himself think about his mother.

But when the reigning sultan began to crack down on the city's crime, the pressure fell heaviest on self reliant thieves, because who really cared about them? Stealing became near impossible, a life gamble that used to only threaten time in the stocks. Many died in what came to be known in the ranks of Agrabah's poverty as the hot, spare summer. Those who did not have what it takes to overcome fell in the sand.

At fifteen, Aladdin feared he too would fail. One day without food was nothing, two days, a mild discomfort, but after a week Aladdin could not sleep for the hunger pains, after ten days, he stumbled when he walked, and the pain became agony. Though he doubted, even at starvation's door, he would stoop so low, he observed even begging was unfruitful. Crippled by hunger, there was no chance he could pull off a thievery attempt successfully. He could barely hold a fist.

As he searched one late afternoon for leftovers from the market stands as they closed, a vendor beckoned. At first, Aladdin did not realize he was being addressed at all, after all, who acknowledged a street rat and a thief? But when wearily he looked up, it was true, a man was waving his hand as indication to approach his dismantled merchant's stand.

He came as called, and stood in front of the merchant. Aladdin's eyes apathetically registered the man's rough and sweaty appearance, and instead lit brightly upon the boxes in the sand filled with ripe mangoes, rich figs, and still steaming breads. The empty agony in his abdomen seized at such close proximity to food.

The man spoke to him hurriedly, lowly.

"You, boy, are you hungry?"

Aladdin looked up at him in watery bewilderment. Was it not obvious, were the constant groans in his stomach not audible? He found, however, the strength to nod, and, on afterthought, "Yes sir."

The man nodded as if Aladdin had assured something, and confided, "I thought so. I could tell. Listen," his voice dropped again. Blankly, Aladdin wondered, whom was he trying to hide from?

"What would you do for, say, a mango or two? Maybe even a loaf to take home?"

The man looked up apprehensively as soon as he finished his question. The streets were clearing as dusk fell; he, Aladdin, and a strolling couple several blocks down the street were the only ones outside. Feeling more confidant, he took Aladdin by the wrist and pulled him under the market awning.

Aladdin, even at such close proximity with the vendor, smelt beyond the man's strong odor, and instead was steadily imagining he could smell and taste every prospective bite of the fruit, and could even feel the solid warmth of the bread in his hands already.

"Anything," he said in sincerity, "Anything." If he did not eat today, or tonight, he would surely loose the strength to try again tomorrow. He refused to be just another number in the count of dead thieves. He added quickly, "Please, I can work…"

The man seemed to ignore the last part of what Aladdin said, and instead engulfed the entirety of Aladdin's arm in his meaty hand and forced him to stand straight, shaking him a little to get his attention. It seemed Aladdin was already bending to take the food.

"Listen, kid, Are you sure you'd do anything? I want you to understand…" To understand? The hunger must have been worsening. He felt less pain now, and instead suffered desperation, and a slight dizziness, in fact. He must have been imaging things, because he felt the merchant's fingers depart from simply grasping his arm, to feeling it, to pushing and testing the flesh with his fingers, and beyond that, tilting his chin up.

"I don't under-"

Aladdin stopped short, shocked and disrupted as the seller took Aladdin's hand and placed it below his belt, moving forward so that the swells of his body pushed Aladdin back against the vendor's stall. Disbelief seized his body, and a lukewarm wave of sickening realization flooded him. The man looked into his face fiercely and expectantly. He knew without asking there were no exceptions and no bargains; it was either follow him into the open doorway behind him, or the food could go to someone else.

Aladdin simply panicked internally, if only for a moment, as the man spoke empty encouragement, and pressed even closer. He delayed making a decision; run and starve, or _this_? Was his dignity worth this, could he fall so low for just a meal?

No, a part of him contested stubbornly. This was not _just a meal_; this was survival. One must make concessions, he reasoned; this sort of thing wasn't unheard of. Even as his body grew cold, he knew, he would not let this city win. He would not starve, he would triumph, and eat, and grow. To please this merchant today was to live tomorrow, and perhaps never have to do it again. Yes, he could do this, he had to be strong. He had to keep thinking ahead, he convinced himself.

He nodded, however, hesitantly, not trusting himself to speak, and disappeared with vendor back behind his stall in the private darkness.

Afterwards, he vomited on the sand.

He tried not to, he really did. He kept silent and composed, holding two melons and two loaves close to his chest, and did not break into a run until he was out of the merchant's sight. He stumbled and choked on his tears, but forced himself to eat half the melon right then and there leaning against the cooling stones of an alleyway's wall. He did not taste, he did not savor, but threw the food down his throat and barely chewed in an anger he did not understand, but fiercely so. And then, as the pain abated, he made the mistake of reflecting on what he just did, and became sick upon the sand.

He cursed himself for being foolish; who knew when he'd be able to eat again? He could not afford to be wasteful, not now.

The guards would eventually slack on their patrol of the city; thieves would gain confidence, and the day's meal was easier to conquest. Aladdin was right in assuming he wouldn't have to _always_ resort to responding to muffled requests and shady gestures. As a successful thief, he could usually support himself, and grew beyond his obstacles. But obstacles would still occur; difficulties and hard times would have to be lived through.

Eventually, there would come a time when Aladdin would walk through the marketplace and a vendor here or there, or even a guard, would strive to silently catch his gaze, and if absolutely necessary, Aladdin would meet their eyes if there was nothing else to be done. He knew it was not efficient to dwell too long on self-disgust; regrets were counterproductive and a luxury he could not afford.

After all, these are just the things we do.


End file.
